Three Medjool dates.

That was my snack on Saturday afternoon. My wife had left a box on the kitchen counter, and I ate three of those big sticky dates standing up while the kids argued over a board game.

I felt pretty good about it.

Dates are fruit. Nothing is added to them. Half the wellness accounts I follow call dates nature's candy, as if the word nature settles it.

Then I checked my glucose monitor. That's the small sensor on the back of my arm that reads my blood sugar every few minutes.

Those three dates raised my blood sugar 62 points in about 40 minutes.

Two hours later, my blood sugar had dropped below where it started... and I was hungry again.

This is one person's experiment, not medical advice. Everyone's body responds differently.

The timing of my little test is funny.

On Friday, a new trial in the journal Clinical Nutrition ESPEN made the rounds. Researchers swapped the sugar in vanilla ice cream for brazzein, a very sweet protein made by fermentation. People's blood sugar rose less after the brazzein ice cream than after the regular kind.

So scientists are working hard to get sweetness without the sugar.

Meanwhile, the snack aisle treats dates as a free pass. Date-sweetened bars, date syrup, dates stuffed with peanut butter... all sold as the no-refined-sugar choice.

But here's the thing. The sugar in a date is mostly glucose and fructose. Table sugar breaks down into those same two sugars in your gut.

● The Science

Dates are a strange case.

Their glycemic index is usually low to medium. That's a score of how fast a food raises blood sugar compared with pure glucose. A 2002 study in the Saudi Medical Journal tested three date varieties and got scores from about 30 to 50.

In other words, gram for gram, the sugar in dates reaches your blood more slowly than the starch in white bread.

So why did my three dates raise my blood sugar 62 points?

Because a dried date is small and dense. One Medjool date has about 16 grams of sugar, based on USDA nutrition data. Three Medjool dates hold about 48 grams. A 12-ounce can of Coke has 39.

The glycemic index tells you how fast. The portion tells you how much.

You may have seen headlines saying dates lower blood sugar. Most trace back to a 2024 editorial in the World Journal of Diabetes that got passed around again this summer. It's interesting. But it rested on only a handful of human studies, and those looked at long-term averages, not the hour after a snack.

The research is still young.

● Meanwhile… The Hack

We don't have to give up dates. We just have to stop eating them alone.

On Sunday I ate the same three Medjool dates. This time I had them with a big handful of almonds and a few spoonfuls of plain Greek yogurt.

That snack raised my blood sugar 31 points. Half as much.

Why does that work? Fat, protein, and fiber slow down how fast food leaves your stomach. When food leaves your stomach more slowly, the sugar from the dates reaches your blood more slowly too.

The almonds have research behind them. A small 2007 study from the University of Toronto added almonds to white bread. The more almonds people ate, the less their blood sugar rose. The clear drop came at about two to three ounces of almonds, so a few nuts isn't the same as a real handful.

The yogurt is less clear. A 2003 study found that eating dates with plain yogurt barely changed their glycemic index. I still like yogurt for the protein. But I wouldn't count on yogurt alone.

● The Bigger Picture

Dates aren't the only dried-fruit snack with a shiny reputation. Drying a fruit takes out the water and keeps the sugar, so a small handful carries a lot.

Here's how much a few of these raised my blood sugar.

None of these are bad foods. They're just more sugar than they look.

I'll keep eating dates. I love them.

I just won't eat three alone at 3 p.m. and call it a health snack.

On Wednesday, dates go up against raisins and dried mango. I have a guess about which one raised my blood sugar most... and I could be wrong.

Stay steady